“I think that for me any picture that works even if it is in the guise of pure color application, if it works, involved drawing. That is falt space on a flat surface. And for me, and I always say this, whether it's a Titian or a [Kenneth] Noland, the ones that come off work in that depth and the color perhaps it is divine and the thing that makes it work, but it is line color. If it doesn't work then it's decorative or dead or just applied colors on a surface. That's what wallpaper is. And that's the difference between the striped wallpaper and a great Noland.”

— Helen Frankenthaler

quote about drawing in a picture
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

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Helen Frankenthaler 46

American artist 1928–2011

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

“I still, when I judge my own pictures (either while I'm working or after I think it's finished) determine if they work in a certain kind of space through shape or color. I think all totally abstract pictures – the best ones that really come off – Newman, Pollock, Noland – have tremendous space; perspective space despite the emphasis on flat surface. For example, in Noland a band of yellow in relation to a band of blue and one of orange can move in depth although they are married to the surface. This has become a familiar explanation, but few people really see and feel it that way.... in my work, because of color and shape a lot is read in the landscape sense..”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Source: 1960s, Interview with Henry Geldzahler', in 'Artforum', 1965, p. 37

“I mixed [early 1950's] funny shades of colors and used them but I used them because they made the drawing in my picture move. It wasn't because I was in love with the idea of putting color down. But these colors were the expedient things to use for the way I drew and I say 'draw' not meaning line, though it might have included line. But the way I drew or envisioned or made my work. And it happened that it came out stressing color. But I did not have a vision or a notion about color per se being the thing that would make me or my pictures work or operate.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about shades and drawing
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

“If any-thing, there's a difference in working with color in England and the color in the U. S.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Page 68.
Interview with Judy Harris (1982)

“Only now [1943] I become conscious that my work in black, white and little color planes has been merely 'drawing' in oil color. In drawing, the lines are the principal means of expressions... In painting, however, the lines are absorbed by the color planes; but the limitations of the planes show themselves as lines and conserve their great value.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

note from his postcard, late May 1943; as quoted in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 240
1940's

“The profoundness of our emotions comes from the sufficiency of these lines and these colors to explain themselves.... everything is contained in the beauty of the work.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote 1890, from Denis' essay published in the review 'Art et Critique'; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [13]
In August 1890, Denis consolidated his new ideas and presented them in a famous essay published in the review 'Art et Critique'. In his essay, he termed the new movement 'neo-traditionaism', in opposition to the 'progressism' of the Neo-impressionists, led by Seurat
1890 - 1920

“I was interested in achieving a creative freedom, a style that I could express with Seurat's.... color technique [color-divisionism], but shaped to my own needs. Proof that I found it is in my paintings of that period, among which is the famous 'Pan-Pan a Monico' [Severini painted in 1912]. My preference for Neo-Impressionism dates from those works. At times I tried to suppress it, but it always worked its way back to the surface.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 53; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003.

“[I] could not design forms and colors that would achieve some preconceived result... I wasn't going to hire them. I was more interested in working WITH them than in their working for me.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Quote from Rauschenberg, Andrew Forge, H.N. Abrams, New York n.d., p. 12
1980's

“It was truly revealing. The strength of the intervention, the intensity of colors and the happiness of this work, has never left me.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

Quote about the painting 'Piano lesson' of Matisse, Van Velde saw around 1925 for the first time and inspired him strongly during the 1930's
1970's
Source: article Schilder Bram van Velde in Dordrecht, by Paul Groot, newspaper NRC Handelsblad, 1979 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)

“A deep and serene silence filled her structures composed of colors and surfaces. The exclusive use of horizontal and vertical rectangular planes in the work of art, the extreme simplification, exerted a decisive influence on my work. Here I found, stripped down to the limit, the essential elements of all earthly constructions: the bursting, upward surge of the lines and the planes toward the sky, the verticality of pure life, and the vast equilibrium, the sheer horizontality and expansiveness of dreamlike peace. Her work was for me a symbol of a divinely built 'house' which man in his vanity has ravaged and sullied.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

a remark on the art of Sophie Taeuber, whom he later married.
in Abstract Painting Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 58
1960s

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Helen Frankenthaler 46

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